The present invention is related to a technique capable of judging a travel region where a vehicle is presently traveling in order to perform a lighting control suitable for the travel region.
With respect to vehicle navigation methods, navigation methods using GPS (Global Positioning system) and other navigation methods utilizing road-to-vehicle communications are known in this technical field.
Various types of lighting control apparatuses have been proposed in which light distributions are varied in connection with travel conditions of vehicles in such a manner that lighting controls of vehicle lighting members are carried out based upon information acquired from navigation apparatuses.
However, the conventional lighting control apparatus cannot judge in which travel region the vehicle is traveling at the present stage. As a result, the conventional lighting control apparatus has problems. That is, the lighting control by this conventional lighting control apparatus can hardly guarantee that the vehicle lighting operation suitable for the region presently being traveled by the vehicle is carried out.
For instance, the conventional lighting control apparatus cannot judge whether the vehicle is traveling in a city area, or a suburb road, since the same lighting controls are carried out in both the above-described regions, the satisfactory lighting performance cannot be established.
The present invention has such an object that a travel region where a vehicle is now traveled is judged, and thus, a vehicle lighting control suitable for this judged travel region can be carried out.
Therefore, in order to solve the above-described problem, a vehicle lighting apparatus, according to the present invention, comprises a travel environment detecting means for acquiring information indicative of a travel environment related to a travel path of a vehicle; travel region judging means for judging the travel region where the vehicle is presently traveling based upon the information acquired by the travel environment detecting means; and lighting control means for performing a lighting control of a vehicle lighting member in response to a judgement signal derived from the travel region judging means.
As a consequence, in accordance with the present invention, while the information indicative of the travel environment as to the travel path of the vehicle is acquired, since the sort of the travel region is judged based upon this acquired information, the vehicle lighting apparatus can perform the lighting control suitable for the travel region of the vehicle.